Meh. It’s been a tough day. One filled with misunderstandings, mis-communication, frustration and one rather surprising disappointment. In fact, it was an apt day for me to be reading this post from the personal blog of one of my favorite writers in the tech industry (where my day job keeps me busy), Sarah Lacy. She wondered when she became such an angry girl, and if it was somehow linked to her own high expectations for herself, and of herself. I nodded along as I read, even commenting about my ridiculous desire to keep approximately seventeen plates of my life spinning all at once, even the “organic veggie growing when you have neither the time or space to do it and the mere fact of having to water that thing stresses you out every morning as you rush out the door at 7:15am for the bus” plate.

On days like today and in situations that test me, my best intentions sometimes desert me, and I find myself doing or saying things that i know are about as far from graceful as David Beckham is from ever being really welcome in a U.S. soccer stadium. Then of course, i go home and stew about them, and beat myself up about them (not literally of course – don’t get scared people). All filled with the intention to do better the next day. Which I’m hoping will happen tomorrow.

In the meantime, I was stuck feeling blue. My usual, set-in-stone-on-the-calendar-never-miss-it Tuesday gym class failed to lift me, even though it was filled with the types of kicks and punches that for me, release stress in the way that ten hours of yoga never could. In fact, I was so tired and all my limbs ached so much (for me, one of the worst side effects of stress), that it was all I could do to crawl home after bailing on the class half-way through, a cardinal sin in my book.

But whaddya know? As I hauled myself up the stairs to my city cottage, i spied the box of squash plants, sown in wild optimism two months ago. Only one remained after the great snail siege of 2009, and i was privately wondering when to admit defeat. Maybe the squash plant didn’t take too kindly to me belittling it in public, because the very beginnings of a flower were starting to show! Ok, it was only a very slight emergence, but it was enough. Enough to send me barrelling into the house for an impromptu play session with Sophie the dog, pour a medicinal glass of delicious Pinot Noir, and heat up a mound of the carbohydrate described by skinny people as “ugh, a bowl of white bread with sauce all over it” and to the rest of us, pasta. With home-made cherry tomato sauce, natch. Perhaps I can keep those plates spinning after all…

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